On his Art of the Prank blog, Joey Skaggs recounts how he was recently contacted by CBS TV, who were recruiting pranksters for a reality TV show, tentatively called "Pranksters." The concept of the show is that "comedians compete for a chance at their prank show." Kind of like HGTV's Design Star, except with pranksters. CBS wanted to know if Joey would be interested in participating. His comment:

Do they not see the irony in what they are trying to do? They are asking pranksters — people who have dedicated a large portion of their brain cells to coming up with ways to secretly confound, obfuscate and obliterate all semblance of authority in their lives — to submit their best pranking efforts to a committee of lawyers, producers and network executives for approval and then to be judged by some panel of “experts”?

Joey initially contemplated using his tried-and-true strategy of getting a friend to pretend to be him. But after he realized that any involvement with the show would give CBS the "irrevocable, unlimited, perpetual, worldwide, royalty and payment-free license to use and reproduce my materials in this program" he decided to wash his hands of them altogether.

A few decades ago, when the copyright law was changed regarding the work-for-hire rules, several magazines reasized they could no longer claim total rights for a one-time royalty payment. They tried to trick writers into signing away all rights to any work published by the magazine by putting a statement on the check waiving any rights to the work. Several writers crossed out the statement and cashed the checks. If I remember right, the magazines sued and lost. Sounds like CBS is trying hte same shit and expects to get away with it.

Statements to the effect that "irrevocable, unlimited, perpetual, worldwide, royalty and payment-free license to use and reproduce my materials in this program" are signed away are pretty much standard in television.

A few years ago, I was on the short-lived show Lie Detector and I believe I signed something similar.

I'm not defending this practice, by the way.

Posted by Cranky Media Guy on Wed Nov 28, 2007 at 04:22 AM
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